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December 11, 2017

I was writing in my “she shed,” what I call my writing sanctuary, and what I’ve recently learned my neighbors call the Taj Mahal because of my plastic $99.00 Maria Theresa chandelier from Home Depot, when I first heard the words.

“Your bedroom is falling off.”

The neighborhood plumber, who is also a surfer and a grandfather (because everyone in this neighborhood defies convention), was talking to the neighborhood jack-of-all-trades and my husband. My fingers froze hovering over my keyboard, my novel halted, while four small words screamed in my mind.

I told you so.

All summer long while attending meetings of the 500 Club (happy hour) on my neighbor’s porch across the street, I would gaze at our little tindominium where we had moved two years ago after opting to downsize big time. A sign my husband found now hangs over our couch and defines our life. “Less house. More home.”

“Our bedroom is crooked,” I would say, but no one seemed particularly concerned. I was referring to the push-out part of the 1995 Seville trailer that is our home on outer Cape Cod six months of the year where our bedroom is located. Specifically, the push-out is where the head and most of the queen size bed sit.

“Maybe you should go on a diet. The bedroom is sinking lower on your side of the bed,” I said to my husband more than once. He and others would chuckle and then the conversation returned to oystering, shark sighting, and surfing. The daily staples on Cape Cod during the summer.

Now, in the depth of December, when our six-month stay in tropical St. John in the Virgin Islands had been delayed due to Hurricane Irma, our bedroom was going to fall off. I hadn’t planned on either.

What we had signed up for was an adventure. Selling our ten room home by the ocean with gardens and porches and decks had taken fortitude, but once we committed to letting go so we could go, we were exhilarated. We would travel. I would write. He would play on his boat.

But our bedroom wouldn’t fall off.

I fought the impulse to declare our decision to say, “F*** It, let’s just go for it,” a colossal mistake. I tend to run to the edge of the cliff during crises and have learned to rein myself in. During the two years we have been on this crazy adventure, we’ve traveled to Italy, Ireland, and France. We’ve moved four times on St. John. I’ve published books. We’ve met wonderful new friends who have already enriched our lives.

Like the guys I could hear from the writing sanctuary.

“We can jack it,” Jack-of-all-Trades says. He not talk a lot, but has brilliant moments, and always looks for a way to fix a problem.

Plumber-Surfer concurs and a plan is born. Our bedroom will not fall off. It will be stronger and get a new coat of paint, an ignored item on the honey-do list until now.

The adventure will continue. One of the biggest rewards for daring to downsize is having new people in your life who bring far more joy than the “stuff” we left behind.